1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to application software, and more specifically to Web-based system administrative software servicing local and a remote suite of applications in a communications network.
2. Background Art
System administrative software is generally known in the information systems industry. This type of software normally provides functions for adding and deleting users, file system management such as backups and version controls, and user security control. The system administrative functions provided by the known software, however, are usually limited to a specific computer platform or even a specific service product. For example, telecommunications service providers offer many different services which have been developed independently over time, and which operate on different computer platforms. Each of the applications associated with different services usually implements its own system administration functions for the related service product separately from the others. Thus, when a customer needs to order or perform administrative functions in more than one service product, the customer is forced to exit the first application before beginning an operation on the second application. Moreover, when using the second service product, the customer must then reenter some of the same information previously entered while using the first service product. Therefore, it is desirable to have a centralized order entry and system administrative infrastructure for handling common functions and associated data for a number of product services.
In addition, with the existing software, a customer support team interaction is usually necessary to complete the order entry and administrative process. Therefore, it is also desirable to have fully automated system administrative software, which automatically connects to the associated back-end systems and updates the back-end databases as necessary. Furthermore, the fully automated order entry system minimizes human intervention during the fulfillment processing for each order entry requested by a customer, resulting in cost and time savings.
In conventional systems, a connection is made with a large legacy system via a dial-up connection from a customer owned personal computer or workstation. This connection frequently, although not always, emulates a terminal addressable by the legacy systems. The dial-up access requires custom software on the customer workstation to provide dial-up services, communication services, emulation and/or translation services and generally some resident custom form of the legacy application to interface with the midrange or mainframe computer running the legacy system.
There are several problems associated with the approach. First, the aforementioned software is very hardware dependent, requiring multiple versions of software compatible with each of a wide range of workstations customers generally have. Therefore, extensive inventory for distribution becomes necessary. If the customer hardware platform changes through an upgrade, the software licensing issues must be renegotiated. Moreover, installing the software generally requires an intensive effort on the customer and the software support team before any reliable and secure sessions are possible.
Secondly, dial-up, modem, and communications software interact with each other in many ways which are not always predictable to a custom application, requiring extensive trouble shooting and problem solving for an enterprise desiring to make the legacy system available to the customer, particularly where various telephone exchanges, dialing standards or signal standards are involved.
Thirdly, although more businesses are turning to the Internet to improve customer service and lower costs by providing Web-based support systems, when an enterprise desires to make more than one system available to the customer, the custom application for one legacy system is not able to connect to a different legacy system, and the customer must generally logoff and logon to switch from one to the other. The delivery technology used by the two legacy systems may be different, requiring different interface standards, and different machine level languages may be used by the two systems, as for example, the 96 character EBCDIC language used by IBM, and the 127 ASCII character language used by contemporary personal computers. Therefore, an integrated and unified Web-based system for providing an access to a number of different legacy systems in one session is desired.
Finally, the security and entitlement features of the various legacy systems may be completely different, and vary from system to system and platform to platform. It is therefore, desired to provide connectivity to enterprise legacy systems over the public Internet, as the Internet provides access connectivity world wide via the TCP/IP protocol, without need to navigate various telephone exchanges, dialing standards or signal standards.
The popularity of the public Internet provides a measure of platform independence for the customer, as the customer can run their own Internet Web browser and utilize their own platform connection to the Internet to enable services. This resolves many of the platform hardware and connectivity issues in the customers favor, and leaves the choice of platform and operating system to the customer. Web-based programs can minimize the need for training and support since they utilize existing client software, i.e., a browser, which the user has already installed and already knows how to use. Moreover, there is no longer a need to produce and distribute voluminous hard copies of documentation including software user guides. Further, if the customer later changes that platform, then, as soon as the new platform is Internet enabled, service is restored to the customer. The connectivity and communications software burden is thus resolved in favor of standard and readily available hardware and the browser and software used by the public Internet connection.
An Internet delivered paradigm obviates many of the installation and configuration problems involved with initial setup and configuration of a customer workstation, since the custom application required to interface with the legacy system can be delivered via the pubic Internet and run within a standard Web-browser, reducing application compatibility issues to browser compatibility issues. The Web-based fully automated order entry system simplifies many of the fulfillment issues since the customers need not be provided with additional software and software user guides, other then a web browser.
For the enterprise, the use of off-the-shelf Web browsers by the customer significantly simplifies the enterprise burden by limiting the client development side to screen layout designs and data presentation tools that use a common interface enabled by the Web browser. Software development and support resources are thus available for the delivery of the enterprise legacy services and are not consumed by a need for customer support at the workstation level.
The present invention is to provide a Web-based, on-line application system for processing system administrative and order entry functions for an integrated suite of services and products over the Internet. For example, a suite of products and services may include personal communications services such as pagers, cellular phones, and voice mail, traditional wireline services, and Internet access. Other services include Toll Free Number Network and conferencing. Integrating these products and services and providing an online system for order entry and administration over the Internet allow improved flexibility to a customer when managing their telecommunications accounts. For instance, the customer may effect desired changes in their accounts, in real time and instantaneously, by utilizing the system of the present invention. Moreover, the customer may instantaneously order additional services over the Internet via the system of the present invention.
The present invention also handles the security and authentication requests from both the client and the server side of the applications implementing the suite of products and services. In this way, a single security profile may be maintained for a given customer, the security profile being included in a centralized database servicing the suite of disparate products and services.
Furthermore, the present invention provides a real time transaction capabilities for notifying the client and server sides of applications implementing the suite of products and services, of the modifications effected by the customer using the system of the present invention. Upon receiving the notifications, the applications may update their data with the modifications effected, such that all data maintained about the customer are kept synchronized at all times.
Additionally, the present invention includes a reconciliation process, which may be run periodically, for example, on a daily basis, for retrieving data from the mainframe database in order to refresh all data relating to customer information, such that the data stored in the present invention is kept up-to-date and synchronized with the mainframe system.
Moreover, the present invention provides a fulfillment process for notifying a fulfillment house of all new customers added to the system. The fulfillment house then may send a welcome package including subscription information to the new customers as necessary. The present invention also includes a billing process for directing billing information to different billing streams as desired by the customer.
The above features provided by the present invention are attained preferably with a Web-based centralized authentication and entitlement administration system for enabling a customer to enter orders over the Internet from a client terminal for one or more application services available at an enterprise Intranet. The system includes a client browser application running in a client workstation and providing an integrated interface to the one or more application services. The client browser application provides a graphical user interface for interacting with the customer. Additionally, an order entry server located at the enterprise Intranet is provided. The order entry server communicates over the Internet with the client browser application to provide authentication and entitlement information associated with the customer. The client browser application uses the authentication and entitlement information associated with the customer and applies the authentication information in validating the customer before enabling the customer to access the enterprise Intranet. The client browser application enables the customer to access only those application services to which the customer is entitled. An order entry object initiated via the client browser application is also included for enabling presentation of entry options for the customer, the entry options including adding a new order entry, modifying an existing order entry, and canceling an order entry. The order entry object further communicates customer entry of a specific entry option to the order entry server, thus allowing the customer to enter new orders, modify existing orders, and cancel orders for the application services within the customer entitlements via the integrated interface.